I have Windows 7 installed on my SSD, and I have an internal 1GB drive I want to install Ubuntu onto and dual boot the 2 systems.

What's the "best" way of going about it, I have Ubuntu bootable on a DVD ready to go but I don't want to mess anything up.

07-04-2013, 11:31 PM

felgall

I would suggest that instead of setting up a dual boot that you instead install a virtual machine (Virtualbox is easiest for being able to install Linux versions).

If you install and run Ubuntu inside the virtual machine running on Windows then you will be able to have both running at the same time instead of having to reboot the computer to swap between operating systems.

07-05-2013, 12:25 AM

tomharto

I jumped in an Installed Ubuntu on my hard drive, and they both work fine.

The only problem I dont have a boot menu, I have to manually choose the hard drive, how do I set up a boot menu?

07-05-2013, 06:50 AM

DrDOS

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomharto

I jumped in an Installed Ubuntu on my hard drive, and they both work fine.

The only problem I dont have a boot menu, I have to manually choose the hard drive, how do I set up a boot menu?

Here's the way I did it on one machine. I took out the Windows drive and put in the one for Linux, and installed my fav' Linux, then I opened the boot.ini file and mapped the two drives to each other. Then I put the Windows drive in the slave position, the Linux drive boots and gives me the opportunity to choose the Windows drive or or continue booting Linux. That way I install Linux on a Windows machine without disturbing the Windows drive al all, except for moving it to the slave position.

PS: I'm pretty sure it was menu.lst that I edited, but things have changed somewhat since then.

07-05-2013, 12:29 PM

tomharto

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrDOS

Here's the way I did it on one machine. I took out the Windows drive and put in the one for Linux, and installed my fav' Linux, then I opened the boot.ini file and mapped the two drives to each other. Then I put the Windows drive in the slave position, the Linux drive boots and gives me the opportunity to choose the Windows drive or or continue booting Linux. That way I install Linux on a Windows machine without disturbing the Windows drive al all, except for moving it to the slave position.

That doesn't sound too difficult. I just need to figure out the slave thing as I've not done anything like that before. I won't get chance to try and do it until Sunday so I should have some time to read up on how to do it.